Chapter LXVIII: Book III: Great Speeches on Great Issues (19)

I beg you to observe, Mr. President, that this is the first instance in the legislation of the United States in which any restrictive clause whatever was put upon the statute book in regard to the use of troops at the polls. The republican party did it with the Senate and the House in their control. Abraham Lincoln signed it when he was Commander-in-Chief of an army larger than ever Napoleon Bonaparte had at his command. So much by way of correcting an ingenious and studied attempt at misrepresentation.

The alleged object is to strike out the few words that authorize the use of troops to keep peace at the polls. This country has been alarmed, I rather think indeed amused, at the great effort made to create a widespread impression that the republican party relies for its popular strength upon the use of the bayonet. This democratic Congress has attempted to give a bad name to this country throughout the civilized world, and to give it on a false issue. They have raised an issue that has no foundation in fact—that is false in whole and detail, false in the charge, false in all the specifications. That impression sought to be created, as I say, not only throughout the North American continent but in Europe to-day, is that elections are attempted in this country to be controlled by the bayonet.

I denounce it here as a false issue. I am not at liberty to say that any gentleman making this issue knows it to be false; I hope he does not; but I am going to prove to him that it is false, and that there is not a solitary inch of solid earth on which to rest the foot of any man who makes that issue. I have in my hand an official transcript of the location and the number of all the troops of the United States east of Omaha. By “east of Omaha,” I mean all the United States east of the Mississippi river and that belt of States that border the Mississippi river on the west, including forty-one million at least out of the forty-five million of people that this country is supposed to contain to-day. In that magnificent area, I will not pretend to state its extent, but with forty-one million people, how many troops of the United States are there to-day? Would any Senator on the opposite side like to guess, or would he like to state how many men with muskets in their hands there are in the vast area I have named? There are two thousand seven hundred and ninety-seven! And not one more.

From the headwaters of the Mississippi River to the lakes, and down the great chain of lakes, and down the Saint Lawrence and down the valley of the Saint John and down the St. Croix striking the Atlantic Ocean and following it down to Key West, around the Gulf, up to the mouth of the Mississippi again, a frontier of eight thousand miles either bordering on the ocean or upon foreign territory is guarded by these troops. Within this domain forty-five fortifications are manned and eleven arsenals protected. There are sixty troops to every million of people. In the South I have the entire number in each State, and will give it.

And the entire South has eleven hundred and fifty-five soldiers to intimidate, overrun, oppress and destroy the liberties of fifteen million people! In the Southern States there are twelve hundred and three counties. If you distribute the soldiers there is not quite one for each county; and when I give the counties I give them from the census of 1870. If you distribute them territorially there is one for every seven hundred square miles of territory, so that if you make a territorial distribution, I would remind the honorable Senator from Delaware, if I saw him in his seat, that the quota for his State would be three—“one ragged sergeant and two abreast,” as the old song has it. [Laughter.] That is the force ready to destroy the liberties of Delaware!

Mr. President, it was said, as the old maxim has it, that the soothsayers of Rome could not look each other in the face without smiling. There are not two democratic Senators on this floor who can go into the cloak-room and look each other in the face without smiling at this talk, or, more appropriately, I should say without blushing—the whole thing is such a prodigious and absolute farce, such a miserably manufactured false issue, such a pretense without the slightest foundation in the world, and talked about most and denounced the loudest in States that have not and have not had a single Federal soldier. In New England we have three hundred and eighty soldiers. Throughout the South it does not run quite seventy to the million people. In New England we have absolutely one hundred and twenty soldiers to the million. New England is far more overrun to-day by the Federal soldier, immensely more, than the whole South is. I never heard anybody complain about it in New England, or express any great fear of his liberties being endangered by the presence of a handful of troops.

As I have said, the tendency of this talk is to give us a bad name in Europe. Republican institutions are looked upon there with jealousy. Every misrepresentation, every slander is taken up and exaggerated and talked about to our discredit, and the democratic party of the country to-day stand indicted, and I here indict them, for public slander of their country, creating the impression in the civilized world that we are governed by a ruthless military despotism. I wonder how amazing it would be to any man in Europe, familiar as Europeans are with great armies, if he were told that over a territory larger than France and Spain and Portugal and Great Britain and Holland and Belgium and the German Empire all combined, there were but eleven hundred and fifty-five soldiers! That is all this democratic howl, this mad cry, this false issue, this absurd talk is based on—the presence of eleven hundred and fifty-five soldiers on eight hundred and fifty thousand square miles of territory, not double the number of the democratic police in the city of Baltimore, not a third of the police in the city of New York, not double the democratic police in the city of New Orleans. I repeat, the number indicts them; it stamps the whole cry as without any foundation; it derides the issue as a false and scandalous and partisan makeshift.

What then is the real motive underlying this movement? Senators on that side, democratic orators on the stump cannot make any sensible set of men at the crossroads believe that they are afraid of eleven hundred and fifty-five soldiers distributed one to each county in the South. The minute you state that, everybody sees the utter, palpable and laughable absurdity of it, and therefore we must go further and find a motive for all this cry. We want to find out, to use a familiar and vulgar phrase, what is “the cat under the meal.” It is not the troops. That is evident. There are more troops by fifty per cent. scattered through the Northern States east of the Mississippi to-day than through the Southern States east of the Mississippi, and yet nobody in the North speaks of it; everybody would be laughed at for speaking of it; and therefore the issue, I take no risk in stating, I make bold to declare, that this issue on the troops, being a false one, being one without foundation, conceals the true issue, which is simply to get rid of the Federal presence at Federal elections, to get rid of the _civil power of the United States_ in the election of Representatives to the Congress of the United States. That is the whole of it; and disguise it as you may there is nothing else in it or of it.

You simply want to get rid of the supervision by the Federal Government of the election of Representatives to Congress through civil means; and therefore this bill connects itself directly with another bill, and you cannot discuss this military bill without discussing a bill which we had before us last winter, known as the legislative, executive, and judicial appropriation bill. I am quite well aware, I profess to be as well aware as any one, that it is not permissible for me to discuss a bill that is pending before the other House. I am quite well aware that propriety and parliamentary rule forbid that I should speak of what is done in the House of Representatives; but I know very well that I am not forbidden to speak of that which is not done in the House of Representatives. I am quite free to speak of the things that are not done there, and therefore I am free to declare that neither this military bill nor the legislative, executive, and judicial appropriation bill ever emanated from any committee of the House of Representatives at all; they are not the work of any committee of the House of Representatives, and, although the present House of Representatives is almost evenly balanced in party division, no solitary suggestion has been allowed to come from the minority of that House in regard to the shaping of these bills. Where do they come from? We are not left to infer; we are not even left to the Yankee privilege of guessing, because we know. The Senator from Kentucky [MR. BECK] obligingly told us—I have his exact words here—“that the honorable Senator from Ohio [MR. THURMAN] was the chairman of a committee appointed by the democratic party to see how it was best to present all these questions before us.”

We are told, too, rather a novel thing, that if we do not take these laws, we are not to have the appropriations. I believe it has been announced in both branches of Congress, I suppose on the authority of the democratic caucus, that if we do not take these bills as they are planned, we shall not have any of the appropriations that go with them. The honorable Senator from West Virginia [Mr. HEREFORD] told it to us on Friday; the honorable Senator from Ohio [Mr. THURMAN] told it to us last session; the honorable Senator from Kentucky [Mr. BECK] told it to us at the same time, and I am not permitted to speak of the legions who told us so in the other House. They say all these appropriations are to be refused—not merely the Army appropriation, for they do not stop at that. Look for a moment at the legislative bill that came from the democratic caucus. Here is an appropriation in it for defraying the expenses of the Supreme Court and the circuit and district courts of the United States, including the District of Columbia, &c., $2,800,000: “Provided”—provided what?

That the following sections of the Revised Statutes relating to elections—going on to recite them—be repealed.

That is, you will pass an appropriation for the support of the judiciary of the United States only on condition of this repeal. We often speak of this government being divided between three great departments, the executive, the legislative, and the judicial—co-ordinate, independent, equal. The legislative, under the control of a democratic caucus, now steps forward and says, “We offer to the Executive this bill, and if he does not sign it, we are going to starve the judiciary.” That is carrying the thing a little further than I have ever known. We do not merely propose to starve the Executive if he will not sign the bill, but we propose to starve the judiciary that has had nothing whatever to do with the question. That has been boldly avowed on this floor; that has been boldly avowed in the other House; that has been boldly avowed in democratic papers throughout the country.

And you propose not merely to starve the judiciary but you propose that you will not appropriate a solitary dollar to take care of this Capitol. The men who take care of this great amount of public property are provided for in that bill. You say they shall not have any pay if the President will not agree to change the election laws. There is the public printing that goes on for the enlightenment of the whole country and for printing the public documents of every one of the Departments. You say they shall not have a dollar for public printing unless the President agrees to repeal these laws.

There is the Congressional Library that has become the pride of the whole American people for its magnificent growth and extent. You say it shall not have one dollar to take care of it, much less add a new book, unless the President signs these bills. There is the Department of State that we think throughout the history of the Government has been a great pride to this country for the ability with which it has conducted our foreign affairs; it is also to be starved. You say we shall not have any intercourse with foreign nations, not a dollar shall be appropriated therefor unless the President signs these bills. There is the Light-House Board that provides for the beacons and the warnings on seventeen thousand miles of sea and gulf and lake coast.

You say those lights shall all go out and not a dollar shall be appropriated for the board if the President does not sign these bills. There are the mints of the United States at Philadelphia, New Orleans, Denver, San Francisco, coining silver and coining gold—not a dollar shall be appropriated for them if the President does not sign these bills. There is the Patent Office, the patents issued which embody the invention of the country—not a dollar for them. The Pension Bureau shall cease its operations unless these bills are signed and patriotic soldiers may starve. The Agricultural Bureau, the Post Office Department, every one of the great executive functions of the Government is threatened, taken by the throat, highwayman-style, collared on the highway, commanded to stand and deliver in the name of the democratic congressional caucus. That is what it is; simply that. No committee of this Congress in either branch has ever recommended that legislation—not one. Simply a democratic caucus has done it.

Of course this is new. We are learning something every day. I think you may search the records of the Federal Government in vain; it will take some one much more industrious in that search than I have ever been, and much more observant than I have ever been, to find any possible parallel or any possible suggestion in our past history of any such thing. Most of the Senators who sit in this Chamber can remember some vetoes by Presidents that shook this country to its centre with excitement. The veto of the national-bank bill by Jackson in 1832, remembered by the oldest in this Chamber; the veto of the national-bank bill in 1841 by Tyler, remembered by those not the oldest, shook this country with a political excitement which up to that time had scarcely a parallel; and it was believed, whether rightfully or wrongfully is no matter, it was believed by those who advocated those financial measures at the time, that they were of the very last importance to the well-being and prosperity of the people of the Union. That was believed by the great and shining lights of that day. It was believed by that man of imperial character and imperious will, the great Senator from Kentucky. It was believed by Mr. Webster, the greatest of New England Senators. When Jackson vetoed the one or Tyler vetoed the other, did you ever hear a suggestion that those bank charters should be put on appropriation bills or that there should not be a dollar to run the Government until they were signed? So far from it that, in 1841, when temper was at its height; when the whig party, in addition to losing their great measure, lost it under the sting and the irritation of what they believed was a desertion by the President whom they had chosen; and when Mr. Clay, goaded by all these considerations, rose to debate the question in the Senate, he repelled the suggestion of William C. Rives, of Virginia, who attempted to make upon him the point that he had indulged in some threat involving the independence of the Executive. Mr. Clay rose to his full height and thus responded:

“I said nothing whatever of any obligation on the part of the
President to conform his judgment to the opinions of the Senate and
the House of Representatives, although the Senator argued as if I had,
and persevered in so arguing after repeated correction. I said no such
thing. I know and I respect the perfect independence of each
department, acting within its proper sphere, of the other
departments.”

A leading democrat, an eloquent man, a man who has courage and frankness and many good qualities, has boasted publicly that the democracy are in power for the first time in eighteen years, and they do not intend to stop until they have wiped out every vestige of every war measure. Well, “forewarned is forearmed,” and you begin appropriately on a measure that has the signature of Abraham Lincoln. I think the picture is a striking one when you hear these words from a man who was then in arms against the Government of the United States, doing his best to destroy it, exerting every power given him in a bloody and terrible rebellion against the authority of the United States and when Abraham Lincoln was marching at the same time to his martyrdom in its defense! Strange times have fallen upon us that those of us who had the great honor to be associated in higher or lower degree with Mr. Lincoln in the administration of the Government should live to hear men in public life and on the floors of Congress, fresh from the battle-fields of the rebellion, threatening the people of the United States that the democratic party, in power for the first time in eighteen years, proposes not to stay its hand until every vestige of the war measures has been wiped out! the late vice-president of the confederacy boasted—perhaps I had better say stated—that for sixty out of the seventy-two years preceding the outbreak of the rebellion, from the foundation of the Government, the South, though in a minority, had by combining with what he termed the anti-centralists in the North ruled the country; and in 1866 the same gentleman indicated in a speech, I think before the Legislature of Georgia, that by a return to Congress the South might repeat the experiment with the same successful result. I read that speech at the time; but I little thought I should live to see so near a fulfillment of its prediction. I see here to-day two great measures emanating, as I have said, not from a committee of either House, but from a democratic caucus in which the South has an overwhelming majority, two-thirds in the House, and out of forty-two Senators on the other side of this Chamber professing the democratic faith thirty are from the South—twenty-three, a positive and pronounced majority, having themselves been participants in the war against the Union either in military or civil station. So that as a matter of fact, plainly deducible from counting your fingers, the legislation of this country to-day, shaped and fashioned in a democratic caucus where the confederates of the South hold the majority, is the realization of Mr. STEPHENS’ prophecy. And very appropriately the House under that control and the Senate under that control, embodying thus the entire legislative powers of the Government, deriving its political strength from the South, elected from the South, say to the President of the United States, at the head of the Executive Department of the Government, elected as he was from the North—elected by the whole people, but elected as a Northern man; elected on Republican principles, elected in opposition to the party that controls both branches of Congress to-day—they naturally say, “You shall not exercise your constitutional power to veto a bill.”

Some gentleman may rise and say, “Do you call it revolution to put an amendment on an appropriation bill?” Of course not. There have been a great many amendments put on appropriation bills, some mischievous and some harmless; but I call it the audacity of revolution for any Senator or Representative, or any caucus of Senators or Representatives, to get together and say, “We will have this legislation or we will stop the great departments of the Government.” That is revolutionary. I do not think it will amount to revolution; my opinion is it will not. I think that is a revolution that will not go around; I think that is a revolution which will not revolve; I think that is a revolution whose wheel will not turn; but it is a revolution if persisted in, and if not persisted in, it must be backed out from with ignominy. The democratic party in Congress have put themselves exactly in this position to-day, that if they go forward in the announced programme, they march to revolution. I think they will, in the end, go back in an ignominious retreat. That is my judgment.

The extent to which they control the legislation of the country is worth pointing out. In round numbers, the Southern people are about one-third of the population of the Union. I am not permitted to speak of the organization of the House of Representatives, but I can refer to that of the last House. In the last House of Representatives, of the forty-two standing committees the South had twenty-five. I am not blaming the honorable Speaker for it. He was hedged in by partisan forces, and could not avoid it. In this very Senate, out of thirty-four standing committees the South has twenty-two. I am not calling these things up just now in reproach; I am only showing what an admirable prophet the late vice-president of the Southern Confederacy was, and how entirely true all his words have been, and how he has lived to see them realized.

I do not profess to know, Mr. President, least of all Senators on this floor, certainly as little as any Senator on this floor, do I profess to know, what the President of the United States will do when these bills are presented to him, as I suppose in due course of time they will be. I certainly should never speak a solitary word of disrespect of the gentleman holding that exalted position, and I hope I should not speak a word unbefitting the dignity of the office of a Senator of the United States. But as there has been speculation here and there on both sides as to what he would do, it seems to me that the dead heroes of the Union would rise from their graves if he should consent to be intimidated and outraged in his proper constitutional powers by threats like these.

All the war measures of Abraham Lincoln are to be wiped out, say leading democrats! The Bourbons of France busied themselves, I believe, after the restoration, in removing every trace of Napoleon’s power and grandeur, even chiseling the “N” from public monuments raised to perpetuate his glory; but the dead man’s hand from Saint Helena reached out and destroyed them in their pride and in their folly. And I tell the Senators on the other side of this Chamber,—I tell the democratic party North and South—South in the lead and North following,—that, the slow, unmoving finger of scorn, from the tomb of the martyred President on the prairies of Illinois, will wither and destroy them. Though dead he speaketh. [Great applause in the galleries.]

The presiding officer, (Mr. ANTHONY in the chair.) The Sergeant-at-Arms will preserve order in the galleries and arrest persons manifesting approbation or disapprobation.

Mr. BLAINE. When you present these bills with these threats to the living President, who bore the commission of Abraham Lincoln and served with honor in the Army of the Union, which Lincoln restored and preserved, I can think only of one appropriate response from his lips or his pen. He should say to you with all the scorn befitting his station:

Is thy servant a dog that he should do this thing?

Speech of Roscoe Conkling.

_On the Extra Session of 1879. What it Teaches and what it Means. In the
Senate of the United States, April 24, 1879._

The Senate having under consideration the bill (H. R. No. 1) making appropriations for the support of the Army for the fiscal year ending June 30, 1880, and for other purposes—

Mr. CONKLING said:

Mr. PRESIDENT: During the last fiscal year the amount of national taxes paid into the Treasury was $234,831,461.77. Of this sum one hundred and thirty million and a fraction was collected under tariff laws as duties on imported merchandise, and one hundred and four million and a fraction as tax on American productions. Of this total of $235,000,000 in round numbers, twenty-seven States which adhered to the Union during the recent war paid $221,204,268.88. The residue came from eleven States. I will read their names: Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia. These eleven States paid $13,627,192.89. Of this sum more than six million and a half came from the tobacco of Virginia. Deducting the amount of the tobacco tax in Virginia, the eleven States enumerated paid $7,125,462.60 of the revenues and supplies of the Republic.

Mr. HILL, of Georgia. Will the Senator from New York allow me to ask him a question?

Mr. CONKLING. If the Senator thinks that two of us are needed to make a statement of figures I will.

Mr. HILL, of Georgia. Two no doubt can make it better.

The PRESIDING OFFICER. Does the Senator from New York yield to the Senator from Georgia?

Mr. CONKLING. After the expressed opinion of the Senator from Georgia that the statement needs his aid, I cannot decline.

Mr. HILL, of Georgia. I will not interrupt the Senator if it is disagreeable to him, I assure him. I ask if in the computation he has made of the amount paid he does not ascribe to the States that adhered to the Union, to use his language, all——

Mr. CONKLING. Having heard the Senator so far, I must ask him to desist.

The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from New York declines to yield further.

Mr. CONKLING. I have stated certain figures as they appear in the published official accounts: the Senator seems about to challenge the process or system by which the accounts are made up. I cannot give way for this, and must beg him to allow me to proceed with observations which I fear to prolong lest they become too wearisome to the Senate.

The laws exacting these few millions from eleven States, and these hundreds of millions from twenty-seven States, originated, as the Constitution requires all bills for raising revenue to originate, in the House of Representatives. They are not recent laws. They have been approved and affirmed by succeeding Congresses. The last House of Representatives and its predecessor approved them, and both these Houses were ruled by a democratic Speaker, by democratic committees, and by a democratic majority. Both Senate and House are democratic now, and we hear of no purpose to repeal or suspend existing revenue laws. They are to remain in full force. They will continue to operate and to take tribute of the people. If the sum they exact this year and next year, shall be less than last year, it will be only or chiefly because recent legislation favoring southern and tobacco-growing regions has dismissed twelve or fourteen million of annual tax on tobacco.

This vast revenue is raised and to be raised for three uses. It is supplied in time of severe depression and distress, to pay debt inflicted by rebellion; to pay pensions to widows, orphans, and cripples made by rebellion; and to maintain the Government and enforce the laws preserved at inestimable cost of life and treasure.

It can be devoted to its uses in only one mode. Once in the Treasury, it must remain there useless until appropriated by act of Congress. The Constitution so ordains. To collect it, and then defeat or prevent its object or use, would be recreant and abominable oppression.

The Constitution leaves no discretion to Congress whether needful appropriations shall be made. Discretion to ascertain and determine amounts needful, is committed to Congress, but the appropriation of whatever is needful after the amount has been ascertained, is commanded positively and absolutely. When, for example, the Constitution declares that the President and the judges at stated periods shall receive compensation fixed by law, the duty to make the appropriations is plain and peremptory; to refuse to make them, is disobedience of the Constitution, and treasonable. So, when it is declared that Congress shall have power to provide money to pay debts, and for the common defense and the general welfare, the plain meaning is that Congress shall do these things, and a refusal to do them is revolutionary, and subversive of the Constitution. A refusal less flagrant would be impeachable in the case of every officer and department of the Government within the reach of impeachment. Were the President to refuse to do any act enjoined on him by the Constitution, he would be impeachable, and ought to be convicted and removed from office as a convict. Should the judges, one, or some, or all of them, refuse to perform any duty which the Constitution commits to the judicial branch, the refusal would be plainly impeachable.

Congress is not amenable to impeachment. Congressional majorities are triable at the bar of public opinion, and in no other human forum. Could Congress be dissolved instantly here as in England, could Senators and Representatives be driven instantly from their seats by popular disapproval, were they amenable presently somewhere, there would be more of bravery, if not less of guilt, in a disregard of sworn obligation. Legislators are bound chiefly by their honor and their oaths; and the very impunity and exemption they enjoy exalts and measures their obligations, and the crime and odium of violating them. Because of the fixed tenure by which the members of each House hold their places and their trusts, irreparable harm may come of their acts any omissions, before they can be visited with even political defeat, and before the wrong they do can be undone. A congressional majority is absolutely safe during its term, and those who suffered such impunity to exist in the frame of our Government, must have relied on the enormity and turpitude of the act to deter the representatives of the people and the representatives of States from betraying a trust so exalted and so sacred as their offices imply.

Mr. President, it does not escape my attention, as it must occur to those around me, that in ordinary times obvious aphorisms, I might say truisms like these would be needless, if not out of place in the Senate. They are pertinent now because of an occasion without example in American history. I know of no similar instance in British history. Could one be found, it would only mark the difference between an hereditary monarchy without a written constitution, and a free republic with a written charter plainly defining from the beginning the powers, the rights, and the duties of every department of the Government. The nearest approaches in English experience to the transactions which now menace this country, only gild with broad light the wisdom of those who established a system to exempt America forever from the struggles between kingcraft and liberty, between aristocratic pretensions and human rights, which in succeeding centuries had checkered and begrimed the annals of Great Britain. It was not to transplant, but to leave behind and shut out the usurpations and prerogatives of kings, nobles, and gentry, and the rude and violent resorts which, with varying and only partial success, had been matched against them, that wise and far-seeing men of many nationalities came to these shores and founded “a government of the people, for the people, and by the people.” Such boisterous conflicts as the Old World had witnessed between subjects and rulers—between privilege and right, were the warnings which our fathers heeded, the dangers which they shunned, the evils which they averted, the disasters which they made impossible so long as their posterity should cherish their inheritance.

Until now no madness of party, no audacity or desperation of sinister, sectional, or partisan design, has ever ventured on such an attempt as has recently come to pass in the two Houses of Congress. The proceeding I mean to characterize, if misunderstood anywhere, is misunderstood here. One listening to addresses delivered to the Senate during this debate, as it is called, must think that the majority is arraigned, certainly that the majority wishes to seem and is determined to seem arraigned, merely for insisting that provisions appropriating money to keep the Government alive, and provisions not in themselves improper relating to other matters, may be united in the same bill. With somewhat of monotonous and ostentatious iteration we have been asked whether incorporating general legislation in appropriation bills is revolution, or revolutionary? No one in my hearing has ever so contended.

Each House is empowered by the Constitution to make rules governing the modes of its own procedure. The rules permitting, I know of nothing except convenience, common sense, and the danger of log-rolling combinations, which forbids putting all the appropriations into one bill, and in the same bill, all the revenue laws, a provision admitting a State into the Union, another paying a pension to a widow, another changing the name of a steamboat. The votes and the executive approval which would make one of these provisions a law, would make them all a law. The proceeding would be outlandish, but it would not violate the Constitution.

A Senator might vote against such a huddle of incongruities, although separately he would approve each one of them. If, however, they passed both Houses in a bunch, and the Executive found no objection to any feature of the bill on its merits, and the only criticism should be that it would have been better legislative practice to divide it into separate enactments, it is not easy to see on what ground a veto could stand.

The assault which has been made on the executive branch of the Government and on the Constitution itself, would not be less flagrant if separate bills had been resorted to as the weapons of attack. Suppose in a separate bill, the majority had, in advance of the appropriations, repealed the national-bank act and the resumption act, and had declared that unless the Executive surrendered his convictions and yielded up his approval of the repealing act, no appropriations should be made; would the separation of the bills have palliated or condoned the revolutionary purpose? In the absence of an avowal that appropriations were to be finally withheld, or that appropriations were to be made to hinge upon the approval or veto of something else, a resort to separate bills might have cloaked and secreted for a time the real meaning of the transaction. In that respect it would have been wise and artful to resort to separate bills on this occasion; and I speak, I think, in the hearing of at least one democratic Senator who did not overlook in advance the suggestion now made. But when it was declared, or intended, that unless another species of legislation is agreed to, the money of the people, paid for that purpose, shall not be used to maintain their Government and to enforce the laws—when it is designed that the Government shall be thrown into confusion and shall stop unless private charity or public succor comes to its relief, the threat is revolutionary, and its execution is treasonable.

In the case before us, the design to make appropriations hinge and depend upon the destruction of certain laws is plain on the face of the bills before us,—the bill now pending, and another one on our tables. The same design was plain on the face of the bills sent us at the last session. The very fact that the sections uncovering the ballot-box to violence and fraud, are not, and never have been separately presented, but are thrust into appropriation bills, discloses and proves a belief, if not a knowledge, that in a separate bill the Executive would not approve them. Moreover both Houses have rung with the assertion that the Executive would not approve in a separate measure the overthrow of existing safeguards of the ballot-box, and that should he refuse to give his approval to appropriations and an overthrow of those safeguards linked together, no appropriations should be made.

The plot and the purpose then, is by duress to compel the Executive to give up his convictions, his duty, and his oath, as the price to be paid a political party for allowing the Government to live! Whether the bills be united or divided, is mere method and form. The substance in either form is the same, and the plot if persisted in will bury its aiders and abettors in opprobrium, and will leave a buoy on the sea of time warning political mariners to keep aloof from a treacherous channel in which a political party foundered and went down.

The size of the Army and its pay, have both been exactly fixed by law—by law enacted by a democratic House, and approved by a second democratic House. It has been decided and voted that the coast defenses and the Indian and frontier service, require a certain number of soldiers; and the appropriations needed for provision and pay have been ascertained to a farthing. Nothing remains to be done, but to give formal sanction and warrant for the use of the money from time to time. This was all true at the last session. But a democratic House, or more justly speaking the democratic majority in the House refused to give its sanction, refused to allow the people’s money, to reach the use for which the people paid it, unless certain long-standing laws were repealed. When the Senate voted against the repeal, we were bluntly told that unless that vote was reversed, unless the Senate and the Executive would accept the bills, repealing clauses and all, the session should die, no appropriations should be made, and the wheels of the Government should stop. The threat was executed; the session did die, and every branch of the Government was left without the power to execute its duties after the 30th of next June.

We were further told that when the extra session, thus to be brought about, should convene, the democrats would rule both Houses, that the majority would again insist on its terms, and that then unless the Executive submitted to become an accomplice in the design to fling down the barriers that block the way to the ballot-box against fraud and force, appropriations would again be refused, and again the session should die leaving the Government paralyzed. The extra session has convened; the democrats have indeed the power in both Houses, and thus far the war and the caucus have come up to the manifesto. So far the exploit has been easy. The time of trial is to come; the issue has been made, and of its ignominious failure, there can be no doubt if the Executive shall plant itself on constitutional right and duty, and stand firm. The actors in this scheme have managed themselves and their party into a predicament, and unless the President lets them out they will and they must back out. [Laughter, and manifestations of applause in the galleries.]

Should the Executive interpose the constitutional shield against the political enormities of the proposed bills, and then should the majority carry out the threat to desert their posts by adjournment without making the needed appropriations, I hope and trust they will be called back instantly and called back as often as need be until they relinquish a monstrous pretension and abandon a treasonable position.

The Army bill now pending, is not, in its political features, the bill tendered us at the last session a few days ago; it is not the same bill then insisted on as the ultimatum of the majority. The bill as it comes to us now, condemns its predecessor as crude and objectionable. It was found to need alteration. It did need alteration badly, and those who lately insisted on it as it was, insist on it now as it then was not. A grave proviso has been added to save the right of the President to aid a State gasping in the throes of rebellion or invasion and calling for help. As the provision stood when thrust upon us first and last at the recent session, it would have punished as a felon the President of the United States, the General of the Army, and others, for attempting to obey the Constitution of the United States and two ancient acts of Congress, one of them signed by George Washington. Shorn of this absurdity, the bill as it now stands, should it become a law, will be the first enactment of its kind that ever found its way into the statutes of the United States. A century, with all its activities and party strifes, with all its passionate discords, with all its expedients for party advantage, with all its wisdom and its folly, with all its patriotism and its treason, has never till now produced a congressional majority which deemed such a statute fit to be enacted.

Let me state the meaning of the amendments proposed under guise of enlarging liberty on election day—that day of days when order, peace, and security for all, as well as liberty, should reign. The amendments declare in plain legal effect that, no matter what the exigency may be, no matter what violence or carnage may run riot and trample down right and life, no matter what mob brutality may become master, if the day be election day, any officer or person, civil, military, or naval, from the President down, who attempts to interfere, to prevent or quell violence by the aid of national soldiers, or armed men not soldiers, shall be punished, and may be fined $5,000 and imprisoned for five years. This is the law we are required to set up. Yes, not only to leave murderous ruffianism untouched, but to invite it into action by assurances of safety in advance.

In the city of New York, all the thugs and shoulder-hitters and repeaters, all the carriers of slung-shot, dirks, and bludgeons, all the fraternity of the bucketshops, the rat-pits, the hells and the slums, all the graduates of the nurseries of modern so-called democracy, [laughter;] all those who employ and incite them, from King’s Bridge to the Battery, are to be told in advance that on the day when the million people around them choose their members of the National Legislature, no matter what God-daring or man-hurting enormities they may commit, no matter what they do, nothing that they can do will meet with the slightest resistance from any national soldier or armed man clothed with national authority.

Another bill, already on our tables, strikes down even police officers armed, or unarmed, of the United States.

In South Carolina, in Louisiana, in Mississippi, and in the other States where the colored citizens are counted to swell the representation in Congress, and then robbed of their ballots and dismissed from the political sun—in all such States, every rifle club, and white league, and murderous band, and every tissue ballot-box stuffer, night-rider, and law-breaker, is to be told that they may turn national elections into a bloody farce, that they may choke the whole proceeding with force and fraud, and blood, and that the nation shall not confront them with one armed man. State troops, whether under the name of rifle clubs or white leagues, or any other, armed with the muskets of the United States, may constitute the mob, may incite the mob, but the national arm is to be tied and palsied.

I repeat such an act of Congress has never yet existed. If there ever was a time when such an act could safely and fitly stand upon the statute book, that time is not now, and is not likely to arrive in the near future. Until rebellion raised its iron hand, all parties and all sections had been content to leave where the Constitution left it the power and duty of the President to take care that the laws be faithfully executed.

The Constitution has in this regard three plain commands:

The President “shall take care that the laws be faithfully executed.”

Again, “The President shall be Commander-in-Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States, and of the militia of the several States, when called into the actual service of the United States.”

“The actual service of the United States” some man may say means war merely, service in time of war. Let me read again, “Congress shall have power to provide for calling forth the militia.” For what? First of all, “to execute the laws of the Union.”

Yes, Congress shall have power “to provide for calling forth the militia to execute the laws of the Union.” Speaking to lawyers, I venture to emphasize the word “execute.” It is a term of art; it has a long-defined meaning. The act of 1795, re-enacted since, emphasized these constitutional provisions.

* * * * *

The election law came in to correct abuses which reached their climax in 1868 in the city of New York. In that year in the State of New York the republican candidate for governor was elected; the democratic candidate was counted in. Members of the Legislature were fraudulently seated. The election was a barbarous burlesque. Many thousand forged naturalization papers were issued; some of them were white and some were coffee-colored. The same witnesses purported to attest hundreds and thousands of naturalization affidavits, and the stupendous fraud of the whole thing was and is an open secret. Some of these naturalization papers were sent to other States. So plenty were they, that some of them were sent to Germany, and Germans who had never left their country claimed exemption from the German draft for soldiers in the Franco-Prussian war, because they were naturalized American citizens! [Laughter.]

Repeating, ballot-box stuffing, ruffianism, and false counting decided everything. Tweed made the election officers, and the election officers were corrupt. In 1868, thirty thousand votes were falsely added to the democratic majority in the cities of New York and Brooklyn alone. Taxes and elections were the mere spoil and booty of a corrupt junta in Tammany Hall. Assessments, exactions, and exemptions were made the bribes and the penalties of political submission. Usurpation and fraud inaugurated a carnival of corrupt disorder; and obscene birds without number swooped down to the harvest and gorged themselves on every side in plunder and spoliation. Wrongs and usurpations springing from the pollution and desecration of the ballot-box stalked high-headed in the public way. The courts and the machinery of justice were impotent in the presence of culprits too great to be punished.

The act of 1870 came in to throttle such abuses. It was not born without throes and pangs. It passed the Senate after a day and a night which rang with democratic maledictions and foul aspersions.

In the autumn of that year an election was held for the choice of Representatives in Congress. I see more than one friend near me who for himself and for others has reason even unto this day to remember that election and the apprehension which preceded it. It was the first time the law of 1870 had been put in force. Resistance was openly counseled. Democratic newspapers in New York advised that the officers of the law be pitched into the river. Disorder was afoot. Men, not wanting in bravery, and not republicans, dreaded the day. Bloodshed, arson, riot were feared. Ghastly spectacles were still fresh in memory. The draft riots had spread terror which had never died, and strong men shuddered when they remembered the bloody assizes of the democratic party. They had seen men and women, blind with party hate, dizzy and drunk with party madness, stab and burn and revel in murder and in mutilating the dead. They had seen an asylum for colored orphans made a funeral pile, and its smoke sent up from their Christian and imperial city to tell in heaven of the inhuman bigotry, the horrible barbarity of man. Remembering such sickening scenes, and dreading their repetition, they asked the President to protect them—to protect them with the beak and claw of national power. Instantly the unkenneled packs of party barked in vengeful chorus. Imprecations, maledictions, and threats were hurled at Grant; but with that splendid courage which never blanched in battle, which never quaked before clamor—with that matchless self-poise which did not desert him even when a continent beyond the sea rose and uncovered before him, [applause in the galleries,] he responded in the orders which it has pleased the honorable Senator from Delaware to read. The election thus protected was the fairest, the freest, the most secure, a generation has seen. When, two years afterward, New York came to crown Grant with her vote, his action in protecting her chief city on the Ides of November, 1870, was not forgotten. When next New York has occasion to record her judgment of the services of Grant, his action in 1870 touching peace in the city of New York will not be hidden away by those who espouse him wisely. [Applause in the galleries.]

Now, the election law is to be emasculated; no national soldier must confront rioters or mobs; no armed man by national authority, though not a soldier, must stay the tide of brutality or force; no deputy marshal must be within call; no supervisor must have power to arrest any man who in his sight commits the most flagrant breach of the peace. But the democrats tell us “we have not abolished the supervisors; we have left them.” Yes, the legislative bill leaves the supervisors, two stool-pigeons with their wings clipped, [laughter,] two licensed witnesses to stand about idle, and look—yes, “a cat may look at a king”—but they must not touch bullies or lawbreakers, not if they do murders right before their eyes.

If a civil officer should, under the pending amendment, attempt to quell a riot by calling on the bystanders, if they have arms, he is punishable for that. If a marshal, the marshal of the district in which the election occurs, the marshal nominated to the Senate and confirmed by the Senate—I do not mean a deputy marshal—should see an affray or a riot at the polls on election day and call upon the bystanders to quell it, if this bill becomes a law, and one of those bystanders has a revolver in his pocket, or another one takes a stick or a cudgel in his hand, the marshal may be fined $5,000 and punished by five years’ imprisonment.

Such are the devices to belittle national authority and national law, to turn the idea of the sovereignty of the nation into a laughing-stock and a by-word.

Under what pretexts is this uprooting and overturning to be? Any officer who transgresses the law, be he civil or military, may be punished in the courts of the State or in the courts of the nation under existing law. Is the election act unconstitutional? The courts for ten years have been open to that question. The law has been pounded with all the hammers of the lawyers, but it has stood the test; no court has pronounced it unconstitutional, although many men have been prosecuted and convicted under it. Judge Woodruff and Judge Blatchford have vindicated its constitutionality. But, as I said before, the constitutional argument has been abandoned. The supreme political court, practically now above Congresses or even constitutions, the democratic caucus, has decided that the law is constitutional. The record of the judgment is in the legislative bill.

We are told it costs money to enforce the law. Yes, it costs money to enforce all laws; it costs money to prosecute smugglers, counterfeiters, murderers, mail robbers and others. We have been informed that it has cost $200,000 to execute the election act. It cost more than $5,000,000,000 in money alone, to preserve our institutions and our laws, in one war, and the nation which bled and the nation which paid is not likely to give up its institutions and the birthright of its citizens for $200,000. [Applause in the galleries.]

The presiding officer, (Mr. COCKRELL, in the chair.) The Senator will suspend a moment. The chair will announce to the galleries that there shall be no more applause; if so, the galleries will be cleared immediately.